""Best Picture" Movie Mistakes" Topic

A list clearly contributed to by wargamers:

link

That's an entire list of "who cares." Really, they used '65 car for a film set in '63? Burn 'em at the stake. Oh, they used a bottle of liquor with the wrong label? Hang 'em at high noon. Oh no, they showed a shot of the wrong church, bridge, or highway. Shoot 'em where they stand. Crew, camera, and boom mikes in the shot are bad. Cars and trucks in the shot for a fantasy film is bad. Revealing reflections are bad. But the rest of these 'mistakes' are pure carp.

For Patton, they hone in on a map of Germany, instead of the obvious tanks. For Apocalypse Now, it's tracers.

Maybe I should ask these guys if they found the fish in that scene of Monty Python's Meaning of Life…

I wouldn't even put "mistakes" in the substitution category. Obviously props are limited to what's available, especially so in older films before CGI.

Now, how did those props perform? That can provide mistakes. One that comes immediately to mind is the "concrete" bunker on the heights overlooking the Normandy beachhead in "The Longest Day": Pluskatt is cowering in the dust and cacophany of the Allied artillery barrage, and the wall he's pressing against is moving, obviously NOT concrete, but a stage prop.

Continuity is always a problem. In "Saving Ryan's Privates" we have 8, then 7, then 8 members of the squad (after being reduced to 7 taking the machinegun nest). Airplanes too often change types in midflight; examples could be enumerated. Another "Return of the King" gaff is when Sam picks up Frodo and carries him on the slope of Mount Doom: everything is reversed, cuts on the other side of face, sword scabbard on right hip instead of left, etc. Enough of this already….

I don't see your point, ADub. These _are_ 'Movie mistakes' found in various 'Best Pictures,' whether or not you care.

Personally, I think the modern frigates that got 'bombed' in "Pearl Harbor" were an egregious mistake, even though you'd say that it didn't matter, since a ship is a ship…

And a sword is a sword: but those two-hand monstrosities wielded from horseback in "Mongol" were over-the-top stoopid looking (but hardly a "BP" nominee)….

My point? The majority of these "mistakes" are trivial and only a couple excede being called minor. Wrong map in a war movie is bad. Wrong 60's car for a 60's movie is trivial.

In fact, a good portion of these "mistakes" are simply artistic choices made by the director. If a character runs to a church, does it really matter what specific church is used for the shot? If characters are having a conversation by a bridge, does it really matter what specific bridge it is? These things aren't germain to the story. Who gives a damn? Stop staring at the tree and enjoy the forest.

"Way of the gun" was filmed here in Salt Lake city. It is amusing to see the actors leave through the door in a known building and wind up outside across town. Same thing back when Herk Harvey filmed "Carnival of Souls" in SLC: he used downtown SL and downtown Lawrence Kansas interchangably, pretending it was all SLC. And again, "Brigham City", a local film of a few years back by Richard Dutcher: he used Brigham City and Provo interchangably, all supposed to be Brigham City. Another local film, "Savanah Smiles", used scenes from several different canyons as ONE canyon in the movie. So those criticisms of the RL landscapes not being accurately shown in the films are stoopid criticisms….

But the winner of the "walk out a door and end up somewhere else" award has to be Transformers 2; the characters enter the Air & Space Museum, encounter an SR-71 Blackbird that happens to be an aging robot, then leave through two hangar doors to wind up in an Air Force plane graveyard somewhere in the American southwest. Also, the pyramids in Giza, Egypt are apparently only a few minutes drive (in road-only cars) from the ruins of Petra, Jordan. Who knew?

Those things are in all movies,

Many movies are now filmed in canada so you get montrial as New york ect.

So a Canadian cna see his home in a film set in new york ect.

When I watched Max Manus a movie set in 40s Oslo, most of it had to be filmed in parts of the city that still had couble stone roeads, and buildings that was here before the war.
That limits you to just two three neighborhoods.
One of which is mine, so things that realy happend in down town suddenly happens 300 meters from my apartment.

Infact something like 70% of the film happnes with in 10 minutes of were I live.

Personally, I think the modern frigates that got 'bombed' in "Pearl Harbor" were an egregious mistake, even though you'd say that it didn't matter, since a ship is a ship…

I thought that one was kind of weak too. If you can CGI battleship row, would a couple of McDonough class destroyers have killed the budget?

You guys! After "Tora! Tora! Tora!", "Pearl Harbor" was a big mistake.

Look, most of the movie-going public doesn't know the difference. I don't know whattheheck you're talking about because I don't know much about ships. On another thread, it was mentioned that at least in the new "Barbarosa" movie they got the "nasal helms" right. I concur: but the average movie-goer wouldn't know the difference between a pig-faced bascinet and plate armor (250 years too late) and the right 12th century stuff. Me and cars, same thing: someone pointed out that the Fords used in a WW2 era film were post-war vintage, and they sure got past me since they all look the same for any given c. 10-year period….

Denzel Washington played some dude related to another dude he obviously wasn't related to in some Shakespeare film. Yeah.

"Also, the pyramids in Giza, Egypt are apparently only a few minutes drive (in road-only cars) from the ruins of Petra, Jordan. Who knew?"

Now, those are mistakes. Like the car chase in X Files that went from Dallas to Amarillo and I have yet to date figured out where the mountains come from.

This is where the story is complete rubish. Violations of space time committed soley to keep the plot going. Terrible. Saving the whales is one thing, saving a crappy plot line is another.

My favourite is in Kevin Costners' Robin Hood. Apparently you can walk from Dover to Nottingham in an afternoon….:)

Are you suggesting that it should be a "best pic" nominee?

Didn't "Dances with Robin" have a scene where he shot two/three arrows at once? And didn't that infiltrate into Return of the King where Lego loads up three arrows and plunks them into the skull of the Mumak? I HATE that scene above all the crimes that PJ foisted upon us in the LotR Trilogy….